Compliance Testing & Certification

One aspect of PLCopen's work is the certification of IEC 61131-3 compliant programming systems. The starting point is a document titled "PLCopen Guideline: Compliance Testing & Certification". A product can be certified as IEC 61131-3 compliant at the following levels:

a Base Level (BL) compliant product indicates that the vendor is a serious member of the IEC 61131 community and is committed to use the standard syntax.

a Conformity Level (CL) compliant product shows a much higher level of conformance with the standard. In addition, via the combination with

a Reusability Level (RL) users are able to interchange Function and Function Block definitions with other RL compliant products.

Compliance testing must be performed by a test laboratory accredited by PLCopen according to the figure shown below. Accreditation will be effective for a 4 year period after which an application for re-accreditation must be made.

Certification

Certification of a product as IEC compliant will be performed by PLCopen after compliance testing has been carried out by an accredited test laboratory. The testing will be performed under a private arrangement between the test laboratory and the applicant. PLCopen will only become involved when the applicant submits an application for certification accompanied by a successful test report issued by the test laboratory. PLCopen will not be notified that the test is taking place and will not be informed of any failed test. Certification of a system lasts for 3 years and covers subsequent versions of the system which are declared by the vendor to be compliant. After 3 years the latest version of the system must be re-tested and re-certified.

Certification of products is exclusively for PLCopen members. The document "PLCopen Guideline: Compliance Testing & Certification" is available for members.

Test Laboratories

Independent test laboratories have been accredited and an increasing number of products have been certified. There are currently two PLCopen accredited test laboraties that perform the complying testing of products.